Italian Memories. A single I released online only, it’s not currently available on CD but might be included in a future CD album. This track started with a piano.
I had recently bought a used piano that needed some work. I entrusted local piano tuner Dave Martin to tune it. He made it sound great. A few days later, I was playing away, and the tune just came from nowhere.
It was challenging to produce the recording as the piano was in my living room on the ground floor, and my studio is upstairs. I had never recorded a real piano before. I daisy-chained a lot of wires to get a mic downstairs and played the piano part first. Later adding the accordion and string piece afterwards. Getting the timings right, so the accordion intro came before the piano started took a bit of imagination.
The nostalgic melody reminds me of Italy and has an air of Romance and longing about it.
I made a video for my YouTube Channel using clips from my Italian wedding, so the footage was from 2003 and was filmed by our wedding guests on the day. Hence the grainy effect of the available camcorder technology at the time. I thought the whole thing fitted quite nicely and so I dedicate the Italian Memories project to my wife Barbara.
An Italian filmmaker, Giorgio Maggitti shared my inspiration from the track and used it as a soundtrack for his short monologue film of his family and village.
